Most cost-efficient AI models ($ per correct answer)
Ranked by USD per correct answer — true intelligence-per-dollar, not just sticker price. A cheap model that needs many retries is not cheap. Cost-per-correct already amortizes the error rate, so it is the honest cost metric for budget-sensitive workloads.
Ranking 22 models across the meo-tested roster · as of 2026-06-08.
| # | Model | Lab | $/correct |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Owl Alpha | openrouter | $0.0000 |
| 2 | Perceptron: Perceptron Mk1 | perceptron | $0.0013 |
| 3 | Xiaomi: MiMo-V2.5 | xiaomi | $0.0026 |
| 4 | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Flash | deepseek | $0.0037 |
| 5 | inclusionAI: Ring-2.6-1T | inclusionai | $0.0052 |
| 6 | MiniMax: MiniMax M3 | minimax | $0.0074 |
| 7 | Qwen: Qwen3.7 Plus | qwen | $0.0119 |
| 8 | Tencent: Hy3 preview | tencent | $0.0140 |
| 9 | xAI: Grok 4.3 | x-ai | $0.0182 |
| 10 | StepFun: Step 3.7 Flash | stepfun | $0.0256 |
| 11 | Qwen: Qwen3.7 Max | qwen | $0.0320 |
| 12 | Google: Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | $0.0326 | |
| 13 | Arcee AI: Trinity Large Thinking | arcee-ai | $0.0352 |
| 14 | OpenAI: GPT-5.5 | openai | $0.0435 |
| 15 | MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 | moonshotai | $0.0440 |
| 16 | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Pro | deepseek | $0.0473 |
| 17 | NVIDIA: Nemotron 3 Ultra | nvidia | $0.0496 |
| 18 | Xiaomi: MiMo-V2.5-Pro | xiaomi | $0.0563 |
| 19 | Anthropic: Claude Opus 4.8 | anthropic | $0.0584 |
| 20 | Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash | $0.0705 | |
| 21 | Google: Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $0.0968 | |
| 22 | Z.ai: GLM 5.1 | z-ai | $0.1058 |